According to the New York Times, Skype announced on Tuesday that as of January 1st, it would begin charging $30 a year for unlimited calls onto the telephone network in the U.S. and Canada. The service, SkypeOut, has been available for free during its test phase.
Skype is a Voice over Internet service that allows users to communicate using their computer. While SkypeOut allows outgoing calls over the regular telephone lines, their converse service, SkypeIn, allows a telephone number to be given which will forward to a Skype account. It is in beta as of now, and incurs a charge of 30 euro for a year subscription.

These two charges are still less than those of most VOIP service providers. Skype is unique to those as it uses its own proprietary system instead of the existing standard VOIP protocols. Several hardware manufacturers have debuted Skype-compatible hardware that allows the process to be more telephone-like.

Skype certainly has its place, but its proprietary nature does limit it. This new feature certainly can allow Skype to supplement other calling options.